Reed games
There are instruments that seem naturally to belong to movement, dance, travel and the encounter between different cultures and landscapes. Clarinet and accordion carry this memory within them. Their sound crosses geographical and musical borders without ever truly stopping, continuously transforming itself between popular gesture, cultivated writing, improvisation and rhythm.
In this evening’s concert, everything seems to arise precisely from this freedom of movement. The music of Mario Milani does not seek an artificial fusion of styles, but allows different worlds to coexist while preserving their character intact. Thus emerge echoes of Eastern European music, Balkan inflections, dance rhythms, tango atmospheres, jazz colours and sudden lyrical openings.
It is a writing that continuously changes perspective: at times brilliant and theatrical, at times melancholic and suspended; sometimes built upon rhythm and the energy of gesture, sometimes entrusted to melodic lines that seem to emerge from afar, like memories in motion.
Within this continuous play of transformations, clarinet and accordion construct an extremely vivid and mobile dialogue. The two instruments seem to pursue, challenge and support one another, creating a sonic fabric made of listening, sudden deviations and constant changes of light.
The accordion of Mario Milani preserves all its ambiguous and fascinating nature: a popular instrument and at the same time profoundly orchestral, capable of moving naturally from the lightness of dance to more intimate and gathered sonorities. Beside it, all the instruments of Fausto Saredi move with extraordinary expressive freedom, alternating cantabile expression, rhythmic momentum and ever-changing timbral colours.
The music of Mario Milani also possesses a rare quality: that of entertaining without ever becoming superficial. Behind the immediacy of the musical gesture one perceives a writing extraordinarily attentive to colour, balance of form and the narrative construction of sound. Each piece seems to tell a different landscape, crossing atmospheres that continuously change while maintaining strong expressive unity.
The concert takes place on the churchyard of the Church of Saints Biagio and Maurizio in Torricella-Taverne, an open and essential space where music directly encounters the evening air, the silence of the village and the surrounding landscape. Within this simple and intimate dimension, the immediate relationship between listening and space restores to this repertoire a particularly authentic naturalness.
In the fiftieth anniversary year of Ceresio Estate, this evening also represents an invitation to cross musical borders with lightness and curiosity, allowing popular memory, timbral research and the pleasure of listening to coexist within a continuous balance between refinement and spontaneity.
BIOGRAPHIES
Fausto Saredi
Fausto Saredi is a clarinettist and bass clarinettist, active as a soloist and in various chamber formations. Since 2006 he has been solo bass clarinettist of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano “G. Verdi”. He previously held the same position with the Orchestergesellschaft Zurich and collaborates with ensembles and projects devoted to chamber music, twentieth-century repertoire and contemporary music. He is particularly appreciated for his expressive use of the bass clarinet and basset horn.
Mario Milani
Mario Milani, born in Somma Lombardo in 1960, is an accordionist, composer and teacher. A graduate in piano and accordion, he teaches accordion at the “L. Campiani” Conservatory in Mantua and is the author of numerous original compositions for accordion, clarinet and ensemble. His language combines virtuosity, cantabile writing and versatility, moving through classical repertoire, contemporary music, tango, jazz and popular influences.